Speaking of BBQ....I need to pick up a nice pork shoulder soon and restock my portions of pulled pork in the freezer.
Anyhow...on the subject of ribs, here's my not so secret technique. Would work in an oven, but using a wood smoker, pellet grill smoker (my personal way), or good indirect charcoal setup adding some smoke flavor works better.
Common method found on a lot of BBQ forums called the 3-2-1 method (for how long the cooking "cycles" are).
Step one...peel the ribs. It can be a pain to get started, but there is a thin membrane on the bone side of most store bought baby backs that needs to be peeled of to make them that "next step". You can cook them with it on, but it leaves a kind of crisp skin like membrane on there after cooking that I just think they're more pleasant without.
Step two...rub' em up. If you can do it a couple hours ahead and let the spices seep in for a while it's best. But doing it 15 minutes before they go on while the cooker warms up works well, too. Anyhow, just give them a good covering and rub it in really well of your favorite BBQ rub. Can experiment and try different ones and find what really makes you go YUM! If you want a little binder to help it stick to the meat, either a little Worestershire or some yellow mustard work well (they don't influence the taste much as they mostly cook off).
Step three...cook 'em (3-2-1). Get your smoker, grill, oven, pellet grill, or whatever started up and warm it up to around 225F. Toss the ribs in the smoker, bone (or curved) side down. Let them smoke away for three hours.
After three hours, pull them out and wrap them in some foil. I like to do a double wrap since the stuff can rip easy going in and out. While wrapping them up, grab some apple juice and a sprayer nozzle and give them a good spritzing of apple juice to add a nice dose of moisture to the mix. Wrap 'em up tight and toss them back in the smoker, this time bone or curved side up. Cook for another two hours. (smell should be getting pretty amazing by now)
Final cook step...after two hours, if you want to add some BBQ sauce for sauced ribs, now is the time. Carefully unwrap and brush on a nice dose of your favorite BBQ sauce. I'll maybe warm it up in the microwave for about 30 sec first so it's not refrigerator cold going on, but probably doesn't matter too much. After brushing with the sauce, close the foil wrap and put the ribs back in bone curve down for the last hour. If you prefer "dry" ribs without the sauce, that's cool too...just flip them over to bone curve down again for the last hour and don't bother with the unwrapping and saucing.
After an hour, pull the ribs and let them rest for 10-15minutes before unwrapping, slicing up into sections (I go about 3 bones each, get 4 servings or so per rack), and serving. If you want to keep for a while before serving, I recommend the foil, towel, cooler method. (wrap in clean foil, wrap in towel, store in a cooler. They'll stay nice and warn for hours that way.
3-2-1...easy peasy, meat so tender it falls off the bone ribs. :smoking:
Okay...done rambling on now. Dunno why, just figured since ribs had come up I wanted to share mine. Must be the good sativa I had tonight that's got my mind just racing.
